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Palmer: One-term Barrett government a lesson for aspiring NDP

Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer

Photograph by: Diana Nethercott
, Special to The Sun

VICTORIA — Forty years ago this weekend, British Columbians were still absorbing the startling outcome of the provincial election, held a few days earlier.

The New Democrats, after multiple attempts, had finally won one. Beaten were premier W.A.C. Bennett, 71, and a Social Credit administration that had lost touch with contemporary B.C.

“They defeated themselves,” as David Mitchell wrote in his landmark history-biography of Bennett’s life and times. “The gates having been left open, the surprised socialists let themselves in.”

After all those years of Bennett’s personalized brand of right-wing populism, British Columbians rightly expected change. New premier Dave Barrett, 30 years younger than the man he ousted, did not disappoint.

The rapid-pace accomplishments of the province’s first NDP government were well summarized earlier this year when Barrett was finally awarded the Order of B.C.

“Some of the great institutions that make British Columbia unique – Pharmacare, the Agricultural Land Reserve, and ICBC – all exist thanks to the leadership of one man,” read the long-overdue citation acknowledging Barrett as one of the “chief architects” of modern-day B.C.

“He created Canada’s first guaranteed income program for seniors, banned the use of corporal punishment in schools and created a provincewide ambulance service, question period in the legislature, Hansard and full-time members of the legislature.”

Granted, the latter bit may not seem like an achievement to those who profess to worry about the safety of life, liberty and property while the legislature is in session. Joking aside, there was no overlooking the force of his personality.

“Courageous, fearless, funny, dynamic and inspirational, Mr. Barrett dedicated himself to the belief that government has a moral obligation to care for our most vulnerable and provide equality for everyone. His exceptional ability as a public speaker, quick wit and plain-spoken style enabled him to forge a strong connection with the people he served.”

That part of the citation was especially poignant for those who saw Barrett in action from the 1960s through to the 1990s. In recent years, the 81-year-old ex-firebrand has had to withdraw completely from public life because of declining health.

There was also this: “David Barrett accomplished all of this in just three years as premier, from 1972 to 1975. His legacy to future generations is huge, the equal of that of premiers who served the province for decades.”

Here and there one glimpses the custodians of the order trying to compensate for an-ill-advised decision from the previous year. They skipped the usual waiting period for recognizing ex-politicians and gave the award to recently departed premier Gordon Campbell while the venom over his time in office was still fresh and flying.

The other point to footnote from the citation was the reference to Barrett having “accomplished all of this in three years as premier.” Not because he wanted it that way, one has to add.

Shortly after the third anniversary of that initial win, he risked it all on a snap election, and lost. Despite offering himself to the voters as a party leader in two subsequent provincial elections, he was never returned to the premier’s office.

The single term made a prophecy out of something Barrett had said on one of his first days in office: “We did not come here to get re-elected. We came to implement our programs.”

At a time when B.C. New Democrats are busy crafting programs for their next shot at public office — they caucused in Victoria to discuss the possibilities this week — their thinking is well removed from the notion expressed in the previous paragraph.

Party leader Adrian Dix figures earlier NDP governments, including the ones he served during the 1990s, tried to do too much too soon. They loaded up the agenda with more initiatives than the treasury could finance, the bureaucracy could deliver and the public could digest.

The result being an overwhelmed electorate that seldom trusts the party with high office and then not for long. As sports-fan Dix notes from time to time, the electoral record of the NDP and its Co-operative Commonwealth Federation predecessor over the past 80 or so years is nothing to boast about: three wins against 19 losses.

So he regularly cautions New Democrats to lower expectations about what they can reasonably expect to accomplish if they win the election.

“I’m going to be bold,” he told the NDP convention in Vancouver last year. “But I’m going to be modest in my agenda, recognizing that we cannot accomplish everything in the first term of government.”

Wrenched from context, those words might be interpreted as a bid for a second term before he even secures the first one. But it is more a matter of trying to rein in pent-up demand for change in a party that has been out of power for going on 12 years.

No offence to the giants of the past. But in crafting the agenda that could, voters willing, make him the sixth premier to hold office under the NDP label, Dix hopes not to position himself and his party as one-term wonders.

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